The long and winding road

The title of my previous post is probably going to be a common theme throughout the rest of my time in Ghana, and most likely in Canada as well. One of the tips or words of wisdom I received before heading to Ghana was “be comfortable with ambiguity” – good advice indeed. For instance, on our bus ride to Tamale when we were about 7.5 hours along, about two hours outside of Kumasi, we pulled over because the driver said there was a problem with the engine. So we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited some more until just after dark for another bus to arrive, then reloaded that bus. Luckily it was a pretty nice spot to breakdown with beautiful thick green forest surrounding us, and redish-marron earth to compliment it.

It was pretty peaceful there, but by the time I began to get irritated by the humid heat, the other bus arrived. We stopped once and ate some good food: fried egg sandwiches, red plantains, and water - there was obviously more variety but at this point I’m still clueless about what to eat, how much it costs, how to interact with people, and so on. So I stuck with what works.

From what I’ve seen so far in the past two days is that people are friendly if you are. Everyone I talked to about Ghana said the people are friendly, even travel books, but one thing I noticed is that if you’re standoffish and not friendly than people aren’t going to jump through hoops to please you, and rightfully so. It will be interesting to look back on these initial thoughts near the end of my placement and see if my assumptions change, but so far I found that if you offer a smile 90% of the time you get one in return.

Don’t worry, I’ll be uploading pics hopefully within the week